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10 Surprising Facts About Content Marketing

They say content is the king of today’s marketing, and it’s hard to disagree. People use social media every day, skimming through a number of articles and other types of content, and sharing them with their friends. Very quickly content has moved from being just a new marketing tool to a golden standard, but it’s not the only surprising thing about it. Today I’m going to surprise you with even more amazing and interesting facts about content marketing.

1. A company generates more leads with the help of the blog

Did you know that a company is able to attract more new clients simply by having a blog? Well, now you do. Actually, people love to read things about company’s business as well as about the industry itself. If they already know your company, a blog can help them get to know it better, and if they don’t know your company, a blog can be a way to find out about it. Moreover, a company that has a blog and updates it regularly seems more open and friendly to people.

2. Content doesn’t have to be original to work

While many people believe that if the content isn’t 100% original, it won’t bring you the desired result, it actually isn’t true. Nearly 50% of all marketers take their content from various trustworthy sources and then change it to present to their own readers.

It is important for a content to be interesting and useful, not only unique. Therefore, it’s better to remake a stunning piece of writing that’ll be beneficial to your readers instead of creating something that is 100% original but completely boring.

3. Content isn’t always created by content marketers

Though it’s obvious that content is beneficial for every company, not all companies do have professionals responsible for its creation. Small companies aren’t always able to hire a person just for that purpose because of a small budget or because of conviction that anyone is able to do content marketing: that’s why they assign the task of content making to people working in different positions.

However, even big brands don’t always have a full team of professionals by their side: while all of them have professional content marketers in their team, more than 50% of brands still don’t have a dedicated content director.

4. Email is the most popular type of content marketing

It seems surprising as it seems that people prefer social media to emails, but it’s true: emails are the most popular content. That’s why marketers should continue developing email marketing campaigns as well as putting efforts into making their emails even more interesting and catchy.

It is also very convenient because marketing industry had been working with emails for years, and so now it’s easy to find a number of useful tools making the email marketing process easier and allowing to evaluate the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns better.

5. Articles with images are more popular than the ones without them

Yes, simply by adding images to your articles or blog posts and by accompanying them with catchy headers you can make your content more effective and appealing to readers. While many people value the quality of information, images still work better when it comes to catching the readers’ attention.

6. Regular blogging can increase your traffic five times

Simply having a blog and updating it from time to time is not enough: if you want to increase traffic, you have to be consistent. People love it when the blogs are not only interesting but active too: if you try to update yours at least 15 times a month, not forgetting about the quality of its posts, the result could be surprising.

Moreover, this way you’ll be able to show that your company is very active as it always has something to show and tell their clients.

7. Even content marketers don’t understand what content is the most effective

When it comes to content marketing, it’s hard to understand what content will bring the desired result and which won’t. More than 60% of marketing have troubles evaluating the potential effectiveness of a content.

8. Content marketers use approximately 12 different tactics

There is no one universal strategy when it comes to content marketing. Some marketers prefer to include a lot of videos and different types of visual content, while the others focus on writing articles mainly. Some include things like podcasts, infographics, and various research papers, while some stick to text and images only. Each company examines their own strategies and changes them if they aren’t as effective as they were supposed to be.

9. Not many marketers develop documented content strategies these days

Only a third of all content marketers do bother to develop a properly documented content strategy: the others simply don’t make it documental. While it might seem surprising, it is understandable too: it can be hard to create a certain documented strategy in a sphere, where everything changes quickly and where it’s hard to predict the effectiveness of the result.

However, developing a documented content strategy is very important for business: if you don’t understand your goals clearly, you won’t be able to find out how to achieve them. And if you don’t know the methods, you might find yourself in the middle of the chaos someday.

10. There is no best social media platform for content marketing

The Internet develops very quickly, and people (especially young ones) switch between preferred platforms very fast. Salespeople prefer LinkedIn, millennials love Instagram, and we shouldn’t forget that so many different people are active Facebook users too.

That’s why research and understanding of a target audience are important for everyone who wants their content marketing to be as effective as possible. When you know a lot about your target audience, you also know what platforms it prefers and so are able to focus on creating content for these platforms mostly.

I hope that you’ve found something interesting and surprising for you among these facts. Good luck with your content marketing!

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